I just wanted to say that I liked your post, but again argue that he is not saying to creators to give up on their ambitions. He is arguing, however, that if videogames reach their potential as a medium, they will do so without trying to become narrative media. That isn't a slam on games with narrative. It's just that he feels they won't be able to break through to the next level because the medium simply isn't suited to doing narrative media.
Now, personally, I don't entirely agree.
However, his argument is well made, and he's well-qualified to make it. It would be nice if we could start from there and actually discuss that like mature adults (like we've seen with some great posts lately) that actually want to discuss the medium on a critical level and recognize that criticism is just that.
Sure, it's something I can get behind. I think The Article itself is good, but he did go with the title he went with, and that's naturally led to a pretty obvious reaction from people. It doesn't help that you apparently gotta do homework on the dude to get a better understanding of his larger point, like we Halo 4 or something.
Because on balance there is a lot of what he says that I agree with, I wish games were more about exploring their gameplay, and I don't like the story over gameplay as if it's trying to be this higher learning version of "art". I have a huge problem with the way some people in the gaming community use the term "art". Like it's this fucking award to be proud of.
I never once watched The Wire, and thought man, that was some art there. Nah I think it was an excellent show, and for money the greatest tv show, and it will stay that way probably forever. Likewise I also don't understand when "art=good" became a thing. Bad art exists. Shitty paintings are a thing, they are still art, they just aren't good. Plenty of bad films exist.
Likewise bad games, still technically if you believe games are art. And I have a huge problem that only the story driven stuff is somehow art, but Mario Bros isn't? Mario, like the quintessential example of the strengths of this medium? The joys of pure play, isn't art?
So on some level the dude is right up my alley, but I don't think a one direction fits all type vibe works. Again my issue the critical side of things, they are too often not willing to criticize short comings in gameplay, in fact majority of the reviews I do end up reading can't even describe the gameplay of the game beyond a twitter post description. Usually less than a twitter post description.
I think being more detailed about mechanics and their interplay are far more important and should be a valuable part of a review, and if that sounds like a boring read to people, maybe they need to start question exactly how much do they really like the "game" part of a game.
Otherwise yes games have some pretty notorious short comings in their make up that should lead them trying something other than what movies do. I also think it's weird how much immersion is this defacto universal positive. In some cases it might be a detriment.
Take for instance, Gears of War and all those other cover shooters, rightfully get knocked that sometimes the cover walls make the arena feel gamey, and telegraph the combat from a mile away. That's pretty true, but it ignores that they are fundamental in making the game work. In fact I want to know how much more elaborate our cover arenas and how absurd they could have been, if devs weren't handcuffed to "well, we sort of gotta, maybe, fake make this believable, sort of, kind of" routine.
Because there are tons of possibility spaces in 3d gaming, that are probably ignored because the easier thing is creating a space that makes the most obvious sense and has a parallel to the real world.